Once upon a time, in the foggy kingdom of San Francisco, I was in an Uber checking my notifications. Suddenly, I discovered a man I have never met who lived in the far away kingdom of North Carolina posted a photo of me on Instagram, claiming I was stalking him.

The Instagram post went viral, and people started digging into this man's (or, perhaps troll's) online history. Soon, the Twitter kingdom would discover virtually all his social media posts were a lie. From photoshopping images of women he had never met to claims of fake career accomplishments to describing fake accidents, the distorted reality he had built for himself over the course of five years was as impressive as it was creepy. Even Seth Rogen chimed in on how he hadn’t, in fact, met this fellow at a charity golf tournament. (Surprise: The photo he shared of Rogen was actually that of a wax statue in Hollywood.)

This isn't my first experience with online harassment, but this was a whole new level of social media hell.

The man, known as Tee Medlin, claimed his accounts had been hacked, deleted his profiles, and began harassing me through another account.

The first defamatory post he sent in early January consumed my day, and then my week — I spent countless hours (if not days) dealing with the fallout — both online and off. This isn't my first experience with online harassment, but this was a whole new level of social media hell.

Spoiler alert: There is no happily ever after to this drama, which I wish had all been a fairytale.

Speaking from experience, being a woman on the internet is a full-time job. From my DMs, email inbox, blog comments, you name it: I’ve had someone troll me on it. Every day, I find myself silently screaming, and repeating “Don’t feed the trolls” in my head.

As much as I may want to act tough and shrug it off, dealing with online harassment can take a toll on even the toughest among us.

After defeating the dragon, and emerging mostly unscathed from the insanity of my personal harassment going viral, I’m here to give you some tips and tricks to help make being a woman on the internet a little less terrible, more manageable, and perhaps save you from throwing your computer across the room, moving to a yurt in a forest, and never touching a computer again.

And yes, women aren’t the only ones harassed online, but they are twice as likely to be targeted because of their gender. That said, these tips, which come from the perspective of a quirky, blonde, woman in tech, can be used by any one who needs them. Allies: I’ve included some guidelines for you, too.

Step 1. Assess the damage

Last year, I read Mark Manson’s “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life”, which I highly recommend to anyone looking to improve their mental health. Much like the allotted amount of “f*cks” Manson describes in his book, I have an internet “eye-roll” system.

It’s simple: 1 creepy DM = 1 eye-roll; 1 negative comment on my blog = 1 eye-roll. You get the idea. If you reach three eye-rolls, skip to Step 3, and return to the internet after you’ve had time to decompress.

However, sometimes big “WTF” things happen and your eyes roll to the back of your head. Let’s take my recent ordeal with Tee Medlin as an example. My DMs were filled with concerned friends, my work Slack constantly clicked with notifications, and I was overwhelmed by not only the harassment issue itself, but all the other emails, action items, and to-dos that accompany situations like this.

Suddenly, a previously-intended lazy weekend turned into me filing police reports, emailing with lawyers, answering questions from my managers, responding to press inquiries, answering calls from concerned family and friends, and being glued to my phone as the story unfolded. If this happens to you, I recommend taking deep breaths and moving on to Step 2.

Step 2. Take action

So, you’ve found yourself trapped in an internet hurricane. Welcome to the storm — it’s time to take action. Everyone’s online “WTF” moments vary, but here are a couple things I’d recommend doing:

Take screenshots: Make sure you have screenshots of the harassment. Oftentimes, harassers will delete the content and deny its existence. Evidence is critical.

File a police report: Do you feel unsafe? Has someone said something defamatory about you online? File a police report. Go in person to your local station and take the 20ish minutes to fill out a form. The police may say it’s “no use” (the cops gave me a weird look when I described the situation), and it may feel like a waste of time. But trust me, documentation is important.

Speak with Human Resources: Do you have any concerns about this harassment affecting your job at all? Concerned about your safety at work? Inform HR at your company. Use them as a resource to understand what can be done at work to help.

Understand your rights: Internet law is relatively new, and when dealing with bizarre situations it can be confusing to know where to begin. If you are able to get legal help, either through your company/benefits/family member/friend, that’s great and hopefully they can point you in the right direction. I highly recommend fightcyberstalking.org, not only for their guidance in regards to properly documenting and reporting the situation, but also for emotional support resources. It’s easy to try to act tough in these types of situations, but make sure to check in with your emotional state throughout this process. Online harassment is scary, stressful, and takes work.

I will be honest, Step 2 isn’t fun. You’ve likely already had to take hours out of your day to deal with the online side of this, and now you’re also having to trek outside and fill out physical paperwork regarding something someone else said online? The meetings and calls to HR take time, as does the online research of your legal rights. No, it’s not fair and your feelings of frustration are valid. Just know in the long run, taking these steps will give your future self peace of mind.

Step 3. Give yourself space

It’s tempting to get caught up in the drama that online harassment brings, but give yourself space away from the internet to make sure you’re in a good head space. You’re likely going to get a lot of inquiries from friends, family, and sometimes (when it blows up and goes “viral”) the press. You do not have to respond to messages immediately, so I implore you to put your own mental health first. That may mean putting your phone in airplane mode and taking a walk, having a copy/paste of a “Hey — thanks for checking in — I’m fine and will respond in more detail later” message, or even having a partner/friend take over phone duties for awhile.

Do whatever it is you need to do to get your mind centered, and return to the internet at your convenience. Do yoga, meditate, stress-eat an XL bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos — do whatever it is you need to feel better. This is stressful, and you deserve some time to decompress.

Muting and blocking are great tools to help make the noise of your notifications go down. The world won’t end if you don’t read and respond to every notification on social media.

How can I help as an ally?

1. Don’t feed the trolls

I know it’s tempting to go after the aggressor publicly, but please refrain from doing so. Doxing, teasing, and getting angry at online trolls not only creates more noise for the victim, but also somehow makes the troll stronger. There is a big difference between pointing out bad behavior and reverse harassing the original harasser. Be mindful of adding more fuel to the fire.

2. Give some space

Let the person breathe a bit. If you’re compelled to shoot over a DM of support, know that they may not be able to respond in the moment and are likely dealing with a lot of messages. Here’s an example of something to send:

Hey, I noticed things got a little crazy for you online today and wanted to let you know that I’m here if you need support. I had a good friend deal with a similar harassment situation, and she recommended the following resources for you (links below). No need to respond, as I know things are probably pretty crazy right now. Just wanted you to know you’ve got a lot of friends here to help if you need it. <3

As you can see, the message above does not require a response, shares resources, and tells the victim that they have support if needed. This doesn’t leave a ball in the victim’s court and gives them one less item to respond to.

3. Help escalate and report issues

While dealing with my own situation, one of the best ways friends and followers helped was by reporting and escalating the issue for me on social media.

In my case, it was sending reports to Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter (as my image, among others, had been cross-posted on a number of social media sites). Luckily, as a tech worker, a good amount of my followers were also able to escalate issues internally at the various social media companies they were employed at. You will help the victim more than you know by helping report the harassment.

Oftentimes, social media companies’ (or algorithms) won’t flag or remove something unless they see a good amount of activity on the post. Reporting may seem like a small action, but it will help more than you know.

So, how do we fix this?

I won’t sugarcoat it: Dealing with online harassment sucks. I’ve learned over the last several weeks that the system doesn’t have great resources available for folks to deal with bizarre online harassment situations.

What I do know, however, is that there are people and organizations that are here to help make it suck less. I don’t see the internet “getting better” anytime soon, but I do have hope in humanity after seeing how many folks came out of the woodwork to help me when things got bad online. I hope these tips give perspective to those wishing to be allies and provide a good starting point for victims.

I’m rooting for you.

Chloe Condon is a San Francisco-based senior cloud developer advocate for Microsoft. (But views expressed in this column are her own and not necessarily those of Microsoft). Pre-engineering, she spent her nights and weekends performing in the Bay Area as a singer/actress, before attending Hackbright in 2016. Perhaps the only engineer you'll meet who has been in "Hairspray", "Xanadu", "Carrie the Musical", and "Jerry Springer: the Opera" — she is passionate about bringing people with non-traditional backgrounds into the world of tech. In early 2018, she was named one of the "200+ Thought Leaders in Crypto and Blockchain" and still knows absolutely nothing about Crypto and Blockchain. Seriously — not a thing. She considers it her greatest accomplishment.

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